Case Number 21107

THE LAST CONTINENT (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

An unforgettable 430 day adventure

Opening Statement

The Last Continent comes to us in a well-packaged Blu-ray, complete
with a fancy new narration by God himself, Donald Sutherland (M*A*S*H),
and just enough bonus features to bring it all together and heighten the film as
a whole. But does The Last Continent stand toe-to-toe with the plethora
of nature documentaries that have proliferated the HD era?

Facts of the Case

The Last Continent tells the story of a group of adventurists,
scientists and filmmakers who set out on a mission to trap themselves and their
boat in the harsh Antarctic ice to better record and understand the effects that
climate change have on the region and the globe itself. However, the issues
associated with climate change in the region are more serious and accelerated
than predicted and this group of researches must fight against the forces of
nature in the most remote part of the world in unforeseen ways. Passionately
filmed and documented, The Last Continent stands as a culminating
chronicle for a group of people with the innate desire to highlight the
environmental linkage between our world and this remote, arctic paradise that is
slowly sliding into the ocean. Though, because of The Last Continent's
scatter-shot focus, the emotional weight of the material loses some of the
impact that the filmmakers strive for.

The Evidence

It should be said right off the bat that Donald Sutherland's involvement in
any film promises at least a slight bit of quality. The man could narrate an
anti-depressant commercial and have it be interesting. The people behind The
Last Continent must be keying in on the exact same wave length because there
is his name, smack dab in elegant lettering on the cover. His narration is
articulated, well-pointed and with a subdued yet poignant sense of emotion that
perfectly fits with the subject material. He is neither too monotone and
ambivalent sounding, nor is he gratingly over-invested in trying to sell you on
his words with a condescending tone usually found in documentary fare like this.
Donald Sutherland does for this film and issues of climate change what Morgan
Freeman did for those penguins. He makes the material engaging and provoking,
material which has admittedly been raked over pretty thoroughly and in better
capacities than what is found within this film.

That is just it though, The Last Continent has a great hook to
explore these issues of climate change and melting ice caps yet it doesn't quite
deliver. Instead of the power point torture of An Inconvenient Truth or
the soul crushing footage of polar bears drifting away to certain doom on ice
floats, The Last Continent chooses to engage you on a unique level by
following a group of men and women so passionate about the planet we live on
that they volunteer to steer their ship straight into a region where, during the
winter, everyone else is leaving. By purposefully getting themselves stuck in
the Antarctic pack ice, they force themselves into having nothing to do except
watch and catalogue the slow death of an integral part of our planet's
ecological and climatological systems. As a reference point, they have a hard
time even keeping a package of peas frozen. If you can't keep a pack of peas
frozen in Antarctica, the world is surely going to hell.

Of course not everything in The Last Continent is so serious. We get
to stand witness to some truly beautiful scenes of cute little animals swimming
and playing to capture that March of the Penguins demographic, and it's
enough to make anyone's heart melt. We watch as the crew tries desperately to
get a World Cup soccer match on the television, while also having the occasional
hockey or ping pong game. A thoroughly interesting yet disappointingly
underdeveloped aspect of the film is in watching how these people are going to
manage to cope with each other, let alone their surroundings, for 430 days. And
there's also some genuinely tense moments of suspense and danger where we
understand the reality of the situation that these people have put themselves
in.

And this is where, sadly, the problem with The Last Continent lies.
The message it has about the effects we as a population have on the entire globe
is thoroughly compelling, especially when we see the evidence of climate change
there in the melting ice and disrupted migratory patterns of the native animals.
But The Last Continent is too much of a scatter-shot, never knowing what
it wants to focus on in order to create the most compelling argument. Parts of
the film want to focus on the crew and how they cope or adapt to their
surrounding, part of it wants to focus on the animals and how their situation is
changing because of the thaw, but ultimately not much of the film wants to
actually go into any scientific discussion of why this is happening or the
effects that climate change is having on this region and the globe as a whole.
Maybe the filmmakers think that this aspect of concrete scientific analysis has
been done to death and that they want to win you over with images instead of
words. The problem is, there's not much substance in that realm either because
so many of the film's images want to immerse themselves in the mundane. Warner
Herzog did a much better job exploring and analyzing the unique psyche and
determination of scientists choosing to work in regions like this in his highly
superior Encounters at the Edge of the World. And there are thoroughly
better nature documentaries on the region and these animals as a whole. This
leads to The Last Continent being stuck between two worlds, and not
excelling in any area. Taking this into account, much of the material has been
done before and to a better degree, but this does not negate the whole
experience because this documentary still has a great hook to it even if it
lacks focus.

What The Last Continent lacks in focus, it surely makes up for in
clarity. The film comes with a very strong 1.78:1 high definition transfer that
almost rivals what we come to expect from high quality David Attenborough
documentaries. On the whole the contrast and clarity are exceptionally strong,
with colors blending and matching perfectly. The Antarctic setting gives itself
over beautifully to Blu-ray, with white levels just astoundingly vivid. The
crisp clarity of the pitch perfect ocean blues makes the viewer wish for a wet
suit just to take a dip for themselves to see how cold it is. There are a few
instances during night scenes where clarity and resolution drops to give us a
blown out image of murky grays and inconsistent blacks and there are a few
generally hazy shots, but these scenes are few and far between.

The audio comes in either an English DTS HD Master 5.1, or its original
French and the track delivers what you come to expect from documentary audio
that's dialogue heavy. However, there are a few instances where the DTS track is
allowed to shine, such as the ominous crunching of the ship's hull to the crying
sounds of an abandoned seal. The most refreshing aspect of the audio track is
the clarity to which Simon Leclerc's score is recreated. To say that the score
to The Last Continent is your standard documentary fare would be a
disservice to how effective Leclerc's music is. At every turn the music is there
to heighten what we see on screen, from the tense thrill of the Antarctic
landscape to the raw emotionality of this thawing paradise. Leclerc's score
helps to heighten and synthesis image and sound to create a uniquely varied and
effective score. All in all, the audio track is serviceable with a few instances
of true genius. As for the special features, The Last Continent comes
equipped with the requisite theatrical trailer and 11 small featurettes that
heighten the overall film experience to a small but agreeable manner. These
featurettes range from deleted scenes to added material on certain Antarctic
animals. The most interesting however is a profile on the film's composer, Simon
Leclerc, that takes you behind the scenes to see the construction of the film's
excellent score.

Closing Statement

Ultimately, The Last Continent is an effective and engaging
documentary, though the scatter-shot focus and existence of better film texts on
this subject matter does take away from the overall impact of this documentary.
It's is worth at least a rental to hear Donald Sutherland's narration, and
because the film at least has a unique hook to it, though it is sadly not
explored to its full depths.